Not to mention Botox, which plenty of "doctors" prescribe willy nilly these days. It can have the effect of making someone always look surprised, which is probably appropriate considering what the Snowden revelations keep producing.

Doctors write out scripts for leathal poisons by the dozen a day, because nearly all meds are poisons one way or another, and yes it's not just warfrin thats rat poison...

Rats are actualy quite easy to poison as they don't have a viable vomit reflex, unlike humans.

In fact the vomit reflex is over developed in humans it's why when our brain gets confused between one sensory input and another it assumes we've been poisond and less than delightfully "up chuck" our last meal or two when amongst other things trave in a vehicle of some kind.

As for your need to relax, there is a saying "all work and no play makes jack a dull boy", and dull has more than one meaning so "if you want to be the sharpest tool in the box" remember to schedual in a little "me time" for you and your loved ones...

I think the point is well made. One does not expect their physician to surreptitiously alter their medication to cause harm. It is more than the matter of harm it is the matter that the person you trust with your health is the one actively destroying it.

May I advise some quality time at Ipanema beach, Rio de Janeiro ? I'm sure some well-known lawyer/blogger turned journalist would wholeheartedly welcome you at his mansion. "Utile dulci", as the famous Roman poet Horace one said.

The time has come, the Walrus said,
to speak of many things.
Of ships and shoes and sealing wax,
of cabbages and kings.
Of why the sea is boiling hot,
and whether pigs have wings.

The "of cabbages and kings." gives you the answer.

Cabbages give the antidote to the rat poison as,
Kings give the antidote to brigands and cut throats.

Lewis Carroll was the famous pen name of a Victorian mathmetician and logician [1] who in part gave us a means by which we could make sense of the world and also in part responsible for pointing out the problem with "pointers" when Alice talks to the White Knight, in "Through the looking glass", long before neophyte programers ever vowed never to use them.

His work has influanced many people including The Bettles and Douglas Adams, and his "wonderland view" can be found in many places including Harry Potter books.

A more apt analogy might be: Imagine the FDA requiring arsenic in every loaf of bread - but it wasn't allowed to be listed in the ingredients

That's almost for real...

Look at the "Monsanto Exception" which gives them immunity against future litigation should their GM technology realy turn out to be "Frankenfurter" in nature and people develop and pass on genetic disorders.

Further look at the several hundred additives that don't have to be listed in tabbaco products.

Or the fact "orange juice" can have nitric acid in it and not be listed because it's a processing chemical not an end product addative. Oh and don't what ever you do lookup the effects on the body of the processing agents for de-caff coffee --namely trichloroethane and methylene chloride-- you might lose your taste for it.

Also consider the EPA and the water you drink where all sorts of heavy metal poisons, known carcniogens and organo phosphates and other nuro-toxins are allowed based on how they effect adults, not developing children or earlier developmental stages.

@Clive Robinson
"Also consider the EPA and the water you drink where all sorts of heavy metal poisons, known carcniogens and organo phosphates and other nuro-toxins are allowed based on how they effect adults, not developing children or earlier developmental stages."

Basic thermodynamics tells us that the cost of removing pollutants will increase without bounds if their concentration drops. So, the line has to be drawn somewhere. Your distrust of the EPA or the USA parliament to draw that line at the "correct" point is probably justified. But every country has to draw the line at some concentration.

However, you should weight your risks wisely. There is that old story about the cholera outbreak in Peru:
www.worldchlorine.org/publications/pdf/WCC_Policy_Paper_Water_Chlorination.pdf

A stark example of the importance of water disinfection is the cholera epidemic that began in Peru in 1991, and spread to 19 Latin American countries. Inadequate disinfection of municipal water supplies was a major factor contributing to the spread of the epidemic that caused more than one million illnesses and 12,000 deaths. During the outbreak, officials with the Pan American Health Organization reported that concerns about potential health risks from disinfection byproducts led municipalities and communities in the region to abandon chlorination. One official later wrote, “Rather than being abated by increase use of chlorination, the waterborne transmission of cholera was actually aided because of worries about chlorination byproducts.”

I remember Peru, mainly because of the accusations that the aid agencies were responsible for it spreading...

Every time I hear about water bourn polution or disease I think of Dr John Snow [1] and the little old lady that did not like the taste of the water from the local pump back in 1854 and died because of it which led to enquires establishing from the familes of another nine deaths that it was the Broad St pump that was the source of infection.

Sadly he was badly treated by the authorities who would not reject the "foul air" theory for various political reasons.

As for heavy metals and other similar acculamtive poisons disolved or suspended in water as far as I'm aware there is no real "safe limit" just some nominal fraction of the LD50. And as research continues more and more evidence emerges as to the dangers even at small fractions of the supposed "safe limits" of some places in part due to age but also in the wildly varying suceptability of people.

For instance floride in water, is an adative used for supposed medical benifit, and aluminium sulphate is added to improve water clarity. However it's been shown that the Tea Bush is very sensitive to these, so somebody drinking "brick tea" can easily pass each and every day the "safe limit" set for aluminium and flouride...

A somewhat more accurate analogy would be a doctor who, without telling you, put rat poison in your medicine. And when asked, he explained that he heard rats were getting into your medicine cabinet and he wanted to get rid of them without troubling you. So don't worry.